7 ms·
$12.50 to quote 5 words of an AP story
- Oompa 17y agoThis is just disgusting.
- vaksel 17y agochances are there is an AP article that has "This is just disgusting" in it...you are lucky you only used 4 words, 1 more word, and you'd have to pay $12.50
- jws 17y agoYou are correct… http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_200957.html http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_200957.html contains the four word quote.
- omouse 17y agoIt isn't just the AP, it's also Reuters, The Toronto Star, The Globe & Mail, The Boston Globe, and Ziff Davis Media that use iCopyright.
- anigbrowl 17y agoWell, fuck them all then, $12.50 / 5 words is laughable from anyone, even if it's the ghost of Alan Turing with a terse solution to the halting problem.
- hyperbovine 17y agoHmm. I'd pay that. Much higher resale value.
- dotcoma 17y agoRidiculous and suicidal, I would say.
- omouse 17y agoNot really, other newspaper/magazine companies are doing it too, it isn't just AP as the submitter would like us to believe.
- Alex3917 17y agoWhy? It's still legal to quote them according to fair use, so who cares what they put on their website?
- greyman 17y agoYou are probably right. But there is another interesting question - is for-profit news aggregation, where you quote a part of the article, fair use? Bloggers do that, user-powered aggregator sites do that, but is it fair use? Because in most cases, the quote itself carries a news value, and those quoting websites are commercial venues. I am just asking...
- Alex3917 17y agoOne of the four things that can (safely) make something fair use is if it's transformative, which news aggregation is.
- jhancock 17y agoIs there some case law or legislation you can point out that aggregation counts as transformative? I hope that it would be. But my non-legal view of the term transformative says aggregation is not.
- Kaizyn 17y agoThen you will have to make up a new headline/title for the story that wasn't taken out of the article.
- trapper 17y agoI've always found it quite strange that the people who make the money off an article (assuming diggs/reddits etc are generating revenue) are those who merely aggregate content and submit it to these sites. They add nothing to the equation. I don't see this as fair use.
- joeyo 17y ago
- delano 17y agoIt's their data. They can do whatever they want with it.
- semiquaver 17y ago"It's my business, I can refuse to hire blacks if I want to."
- delano 17y agoI fail to see the connection.
- le_dominator 17y agoHaha that's a bit of a stretch! If it's their own internal data and they want to monetize it in this way, the market will decide whether the price they set is worthy of the product being sold. While I might disagree with the usefulness/pricing of their data considering widely available alternative sources it isn't exactly on par with maligning someone's civil rights :D
- lutorm 17y agoYes. But they also can't prevent others from doing what they want with it, within the law of course (ie fair use).
- mgunes 17y agoIt's every bit as arguable that it's data generated by the commons, which they merely aggregate and circulate.
- tjmc 17y agoIt is, but it's a bargain compared to a Verisign SSL certificate. If you stick to ASCII and take the generally accepted average of 5 letters per English word, the AP are charging $12.50 for 200 bits. VeriSign's "Secure Site Pro with EV" costs $1499 for 256 bits and it's only good for a year!
- cscotta 17y agoDon't worry - it looks like there's an educational/non-profit discount of 40%. So generous! If only my work were valued at 50¢/word...
- dan_the_welder 17y ago2.50?
- anigbrowl 17y agoHey, you can get 25 words for the price of 5 - a $50 value!
- dan_the_welder 17y agoBut wait, that's not all! If you respond now we will include a handful of prepositions and a huge pile of adjectives for no extra charge!
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- luckyland 17y agoAccording to the T.O.S., you can't lawfully quote an article if you intend to criticize it? Derogatory and Unlawful Uses: You shall not use the Content in any manner or context that will be in any way derogatory to the author, the publication from which the Content came, or any person connected with the creation of the Content or depicted in the Content. You agree not to use the Content in any manner or context that will be in any way derogatory to or damaging to the reputation of Publisher, its licensors, or any person connected with the creation of the Content or referenced in the Content
- jrockway 17y agoIf you pay them money. If you quote them without paying, exercising your right to fair use, then you can criticize them all you want.
- jakewolf 17y agoI'm thinking this is a good time to start an AP for blogs where bloggers can write articles to be syndicated among other blog.
- randallsquared 17y agoWhat's the point of that? We already have hyperlinks.
- onreact-com 17y agoMany people don't click links in blogs, they mostly prefer to read their favorite sources.
- jacquesm 17y agoI think I owe them a lot of money. Do the words have to be consecutive ? In order ? In the same article ? That's going to make the AP a lot of money I bet. It's going to be hard to get on without them, but we're certainly going to try our best. btw, I'm fairly sure there is a legally allowed minimum that you can quote from anything under fair use.
- joshu 17y agoWhy is this comment being voted down?
- lutorm 17y agoIt is my understanding that the law says nothing definite about what is fair use, it only gives guidelines about what shall be taken into consideration when determining whether it is. That's a big part about why exercising your right to fair use exposes you to frivolous lawsuits that you have to be able to defend yourself agains.
- omouse 17y agoWTF? Doesn't fair use exist?
- jrockway 17y agoWhy not make a few bucks off of people that don't know their rights? It works for the criminal justice system...
- edw519 17y agoNo problem. Using my handy AP obfuscator... For compliance reasons, please identify the web site where you will be posting or linking this article. becomes For compliance reasons, please aardvark identify the web site aardvark where you will be aardvark posting or linking this aardvark article. A new market for Firefox AP de-obfuscation plug-ins?
- omouse 17y agoIt isn't just the AP, it's other publishers that use this site too. The problem is iCopyright, not the AP.
- pmorici 17y agoAre you saying iCopyright is licensing AP content w/o their consent?
- froo 17y agoYou could always quote the AP article and just remove all the spaces, turning it into one gigantic word. Sort of like: Forcompliancereasonspleaseidentifythewebsitewhereyouwillbepostingorlinkingthisarticle That would bring it under the 5 word threshold for which you need to pay, although it would definitely cause havoc with layouts on websites.
- kreneskyp 17y agohow_about_underscores_and_a_greasemonkey_script?
- Mystalic 17y agoHow long has the republish button been there?
- omouse 17y agoWait wait wait, this is a sensationalist headline. The submitter obviously picked an AP story to frame them as evil. iCopyright is the company that provides this Fair Use-violating service and here are some of their clients http://info.icopyright.com/conductor.asp http://info.icopyright.com/conductor.asp * The Globe & Mail * REUTERS * Associated Press * The Toronto Star * Ziff Davis Media * The Boston Globe
- mcantelon 17y agoBecause a company is a client of iCopyright doesn't necessarily mean they're using the same product/service as AP or employing the same pricing model. iCopyright, like most companies, likely provides more than one product/service.
- omouse 17y agoIf you read the page, you could see that all of them are using the same set of products/services, namely iCopyright Conductor which is the reprint/DRM bullshit. Don't just tar & feather AP, tar & feather the whole bunch that are clients of this company!
- mcantelon 17y agoI think the pricing is more of an issue than the tech. If AP were asking for 12 cents rather than $12.50 for 5 words the reaction might be different. What are the pricing models of these other companies that you suggest are equally at fault?
- jrockway 17y agoI pasted my own work into the text box, and it tried to charge me money. It also let me buy, "fuck you, ever heard of fair use". (OK, I used a fake credit card number, but it got all the way to failing credit card authorization. Disgusting. Why do they think they can legally resell my work!?)
- lutorm 17y agoI guess it's an assumption that if you try to buy it from AP, then you have already concluded that the text is copyrighted by AP. I doubt they have instant access to everything they've ever written...
- yread 17y agoGood that Fravia didn't live to see this!
- phantom784 17y ago"are trying to find out what happened" - oops? http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAN_MISSING_AMERICANS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-08-02-15-36-31 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAN_MISSING_AMERICAN... oh wait, http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107 http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- yread 17y agoApparently it's not news: Founded in 1998, iCopyright has generated millions of dollars in new licensing revenue for online publishers, and has seven patents pending in the field of automated copyright licensing and permissions. But it's not really that big if in 11 years they generated just millions of dollars...
- dotcoma 17y agothey're actually probably a company that makes no sense at all and whose short-lived moment of (apparent) grace has just come (and will vanish soon)
- seldo 17y agoLuckily, "The AP are idiots" is only four words.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- bgmccollum 17y agoThey don't appear to be escaping the input when you click preview. I wouldn't be handing these fools my credit card.
- yawniek 17y agowhats the legal status if i translate it or use 1337speak?
- dannyr 17y agoSo what would happen if a user posted a comment with an excerpt or submitted it to Digg? Would AP force the sites to take the comment down or Digg to remove the story?
- onreact-com 17y agoI sell you 5 words for 10$. Also my words will rhyme and you can resell them. For each time you resell them you get a discount of 2$.
- TrevorJ 17y agoWhat if you had somebody read the AP article, and then you quote that person? "The AP reports that GM's sales are down last quarter, says John Smith." Then you'd just be quoting a source. Would that be infringement?